Recently, you may remember I speculated exclusively on why we love standard countryside or horticultural havens: rolling hills, belts of trees, beds of flowers and so forth.
Is it cultural conditioning, Platonic ideal, ancient familiarity, or atavistic memories of comfort and joy?
What does it mean really?
Perhaps it stems from a time and place before we were sentenced to life on this god-forbidden orb or sphere?
After all, the countryside: it’s just piles of soil, randomly shaped by mad weather over the millennia, with peculiar outgrowths standing decorously upon it.
I’ve had the same profoundly shallow thoughts about music. How can a bunch of noises soothe us, rather as bucolic countryside does (except with greater moments of elation)?
True, the noises aren’t random, and it may even be the establishment of order or pattern that pleases us.
But I don’t think it’s just that. I think it might be about sound soaring but, as I don’t know what I mean by that, perhaps we should move swiftly on.
The Chinese takeaway incident
Now, you may also recall the disaster that overtook my life recently after I smuggled a Chinese takeaway into my hotel room. I’m still being treated for post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Brief recap: lacking a decent chair and cutlery, I spilt goo from the takeaway on the pillow, sheets, duvet cover, decorative bedding thing, carpet, shirt, trousers, windowsill, backpack, laptop, mobile phone and car gearstick.
As I drove around trying to get rid of the leaking monster, I felt my life was being taken over by takeaway goo – soup, sauces and so forth – and pictured being taken away myself: in a straitjacket, frothing manically, “It’s the goo! The goo! The goo is coming for all of us! Save yourselves while there’s still time!”
Music saved me
What calmed me down? Music did. Driving about the strange town, I pitched up in a car park, hoping to find a large bin nearby.
First, though, overwhelmed by this ludicrous situation, I switched on BBC Radio 3 and was immediately soothed by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, singing the Kyrie from Benjamin Britten’s Missa Brevis.
I ken what you’re thinking: ‘That sounds right swanky for scruff like you.’ That is a good point well made.
However, I’ve always had a thing for boys’ choirs. The high-pitched warbling signals the last of innocence before the long, sad decline that is adulthood.
How does it work?
Whatever the case, it did the trick. My heartbeat slowed. I could even see the humour in the situation, gaining better perspective than an irrational dread of Godzilla the Goo.
But, still, how did this work? How did the music get into my soul, bring me balance, and transport me into a better place?
In yon Bible, heaven is a harmony of music disrupted by Melkor and his themes of discord. Sorry, not the Bible, the Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. Always get these two mixed up.
Melkor’s discord is Satanic, like death metal, rap and disco. It’s the theme music of spilt Chinese takeaways.
So, there is good music and bad, just as, in the countryside, there are pleasant meadows and fearful swamps.
That’s what I think. I know what you’re thinking: I’ve been speaking above my pay grade this week. Fair point.
So there now follows a sound to soothe your soul: silence from me.
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